By Dave Z | Monday, September 14, 2009 at 12:07 am
My eagle-eyed blogging partner Davis Freeberg caught this juicy nugget yesterday from a member of the ComcastCares Twitter support team:
As TiVo (TIVO) investors are aware, TiVo linked up with Comcast(CMCSA) to deliver their DVR experience onto third party cable company hardware (Motorola). And while the initial fruits of their labor began deployment as a Comcast offering in New England in late 2007, we’ve yet to see a broader release to other markets. Making ComcastMelissa’s tweet, a response to a customer request for an improved DVR interface, notable.
However, I suspect she will be proven wrong. I seriously doubt Comcast intends a nationwide TiVo roll-out in the few remaining months of 2009 and doubt their ability to execute on such a plan, should it exist. Most likely, “ComcastMelissa” is good intentioned but misinformed of the Comcast TiVo deployment strategy. Anyone who’s followed Comcast and TiVo statements on the matter would probably agree that the parties have a more conservative market-by-market deployment plan in place. Some supporting evidence from TiVo CEO Tom Rogers at their recent earnings call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha:
They continue to work through in Boston the infrastructure issues that particularly relate to the installation in individual homes. And I can’t say they are where they want to be yet; there are clearly things that Comcast needs to solve for both TiVo and for themselves so the product can be more smoothly installed. They are totally committed to solving those issues and we believe they will be solved in the near future. Obviously, there’s frustration on both their part and ours that it’s not quite solved yet. But I think, as Mark Hess’s quote indicated, the commitment to continue to roll TiVo beyond the two named markets that we’ve mentioned, they indicated in last quarter earnings that they were focused on a market rollout where TiVo would be the primary DVR and then again today have announced yet another yet to be soon-named market.
[This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.]
September 14th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I wanted to provide clarification regarding Melissa’s statement. At this time we do not have a national rollout plan for Tivo. Melissa has posted the following tweet in response:
http://twitter.com/ComcastMelissa/statuses/3986227613
Thank you!
Frank Eliason
Comcast
@ComcastCares on Twitter